Monday, October 26, 2009

Enter Ruby and Cordelia

(Ruby...so named for the red band on her leg)

I have learned that three chickens is not quite enough to keep us in our desired egg supply range. For a while, we were getting three eggs a day. But usually, we only get two. Lately, we sometimes get one or NONE.

In fairness to the girls, I give them the fact that it is season change, moulting time, and in general this means that many hens are off production a bit. However, we stopped getting that third egg about 8 weeks ago, at least. And they only began laying in (latter June, was it?). So, we have suspected for some time that one of them is not laying in the nest box, but somewhere in their fence-free range on the acre of land they roam.

Which makes egg hunts nearly impossible, unless we know their haunts. And we have not been able to find one. at. all. So, what is the solution? ADD MORE CHICKENS!

Now, conventional wisdom will tell you not to mix (mature) birds of different flocks because you might end up with chicken disease. But we have a small healthy trio of birds, and we got two new birds from another small, healthy flock of neighbor birds. So, we are taking our chances.

Moving birds can take them off production for a week or so, and at least one of these birds is coming off a moult. But guess what? We picked them up EARLY this morning and locked them in the coop for almost two hours so they could get their bearings. (We collected today's two eggs from our chickens, kicked them out of the coop into their range, and locked the newbies in.)

(Cordelia, named by Mr. Nature, who will give us green eggs)

And wonder of wonders - one of the newbies laid an egg for us. Must have been Ruby, since Cordelia will lay green. So, chalk up THREE eggs for today. Hip, hip, hoooooray!

1 comment:

I'm getting one egg a day right now from my three, a couple days none. I only got three a day a couple times. Amelia is holding out on me (the buff). Maybe in the spring? It is the time of year. Unless they have light they stop laying.